You will not be surprized to hear that research shows that parental drinking has a profound influence on the drinking behavior of adolescents between the ages of 14 and 17 years old.

If parents drink too much, it follows that they may not be awake when teens come home after drinking. In general, we might assume that parents who drink are not great at monitoring their own children’s alcohol use.

The research shows that these teens do drink more than teens from homes where the parent(s) wait up, smell breath, and do all those good things that emotionally responsible parents do.

“Decreases in monitoring are related to higher levels of adolescent alcohol use at age 14 and more frequent intoxication at both 14 and 17.5.

Likewise, increases in discipline are linked to more frequent use and intoxication but only when adolescents are 17.5.”

So, it is interesting to note that increased attempts to discipline teens who are older (17.5 years of age) leads to more frequent alcohol use.

This finding supports the idea of emotional coaching and use of natural and logical consequences, rather than punishment a a way to mitigate against the problems associated with teen alcohol abuse.